Brad Thor - Blowback

“Aiglemont?” asked Jillian. “Is that the name of the monastery?”

“Yes, it means mountain of the eagles.”

“Well, I hope the coffee here is as good as the view,” said Harvath with a smile. The sooner they got their order, the sooner they could drink up and get out of there. Somehow the Aga Khan was now involved in all of this, and he needed to find out why. He knew enough about the man to know that two police cars at the bottom of a funicular was only the tip of the security iceberg. The Aga Khan would have the absolute best, and the more Harvath thought about it, the more his gut told him he had just discovered where Timothy Rayburn had been able to secure gainful employment.

Why would a major, internationally recognized Muslim spiritual figure be involved in a kidnapping?” asked Jillian once they were in the car and on their way back to Sion.

“I have no idea, but it’s important to note that Shia Muslims are the second-largest branch of Islam. It’s the Sunnis who make up the world’s majority of Muslims.”

“So?”

“So you don’t often see the two groups working together.”

Jillian turned in her seat and looked at him. “Who says they’re working together?”

“We came here looking for Rayburn. He’s the one who put together the hunt for Hannibal ’s mysterious weapon. Once the weapon was found and made ready for modern use, everyone associated with it was killed, by an al-Qaeda assassin.”

“Or kidnapped. Emir might still be alive,” said Jillian.

“Fine,” replied Harvath, “but it’s no coincidence that both the Aga Khan and Rayburn are known to be in this village. The Aga Khan is the Shia connection, and Khalid Alomari is the Sunni. All of the al-Qaeda are Sunni.”

“What’s the difference, though? They’re all Muslims.”

“That’s not the way the Sunnis see it. To a good number of them, the Shia are even worse than Western infidel Christians. Hard to believe, isn’t it?” said Harvath. “Even holier-than-thou Muslim terrorists are prejudiced against other followers of Islam, but at this point nothing surprises me anymore when it comes to these people. As far as I’m concerned, there are only two kinds of Muslims in the world-good ones and bad ones. Other than that, I really don’t care. That’s not my department.”

“I still don’t understand why the distinction is important.”

“Most of the terrorism, “He tried to explain, “all that militant, radical fundamentalist Wahhabi crap out of Saudi Arabia, is Sunni. The only major Shia problem out there is the Iranians.”

“But if they all follow Islam, where does the acrimony come from?”

“Simple,” said Harvath. “Thirteen hundred years ago, the Prophet Muhammad died without leaving a will.”

“I don’t get it.”

Harvath turned up the air conditioning and said, “During his time, the Prophet Muhammad had created his own earthly kingdom or caliphate. After his death, his successors were known as caliphs, and it was their job to lead the worldwide Muslim community, or ummah. But after the fourth caliph, Ali, was assassinated in 661, a schism erupted between the Sunni and the Shia. The Sunnis believe that Muhammad had intended for the Muslim community to choose a successor, or caliph, by consensus to lead the caliphate, while the Shia believe that Muhammad had chosen his son-in-law, Ali, as his successor and that only the descendents of Ali and his wife, Fatima, were entitled to rule.”

“But what does any of this have to do with the Aga Khan?”

“Now we start drifting into the realm of the very interesting,” said Harvath as he signaled to change lanes. “The Aga Khan, as I’ve said, is Shia, and the Shia have a very esoteric interpretation of the Koran. They believe that beneath the explicit and literal levels is another level entirely, and it is on that level that all of the secrets of the universe are contained.”

“Including scientific secrets?” asked Jillian, anticipating where he was going.

“Yes, including scientific secrets.”

“What’s the likelihood that he was involved with the organization Emir was working for?”

“The Islamic Institute for Science and Technology?” replied Harvath. “Anything is possible. It takes a lot of money to fund the expeditions they were engaged in, and the Aga Khan has lots and lots of money. Not only that, but the specific type of expeditions they were conducting would fit very nicely with the Shia interpretation of the Koran.”

“Actually, any follower of Islamic science, Shia or Sunni, believes that the Koran contains the keys to the mysteries of the universe.”

“True,” stated Harvath, “but it’s the fact that the Sunni and Shia seem to be working together at such a high level on this that is so interesting. Maybe using Islamic science to rid the world of nonbelievers is the first thing both camps have ever been able to come together and agree on.”

“That could be,” said Jillian, “but then how does al-Qaeda fit into all this? I see what you mean, at least with the Aga Khan being involved, there is cooperation from at least one camp at a very high level, but who are the high-level operators on the Sunni side? Al-Qaeda? They’ve always struck me as nothing more than narrow-minded thugs. They’re just terrorists.”

Jillian was right, but there was a piece of the puzzle that she didn’t have. “There is a theory in Western intelligence circles,” said Harvath, “and it has been regularly dismissed as being too far-fetched, but the theory is that there is somebody very far removed from the al-Qaeda organization who pulls their strings. I’m starting to think that theory might hold some water.”

“Someone above bin Laden?”

“Above bin Laden and beyond Ayman al-Zawahiri, bin Laden’s second in command, whom many believe is a lot smarter than bin Laden and could even be the real head of al-Qaeda.”

“But that’s not what you’re talking about, is it?”

“No. You see, during the Afghan war, there was a Soviet KGB agent obsessed with bin Laden. He studied everything he could about him and the burgeoning al-Qaeda organization. Right before the collapse of the Soviet Union, he defected to Great Britain. As these people do, he tried to make himself look as valuable as possible to his new host country. Contained within the intelligence he brought with him were his views and hypotheses about bin Laden and al-Qaeda. At the time, a good portion of that intelligence was seen as pretty fantastic. I mean, bin Laden had been nothing more than a really nasty thorn in the side of the Soviets. The West was on bin Laden’s side back then. We wanted them to cream the Red Army and we helped train and equip them to do so. In hindsight, we probably trained them too well.

“Fast forward seven years, and you have the bombings of the U.S. embassies in Kenya and Tanzania, followed by the USS Cole bombing in Yemen two years later. Then of course there’s September eleventh, and all of a sudden, al-Qaeda cells are popping up all over Britain. Now, the Brits were looking for anything and everything they could get their hands on about bin Laden and al-Qaeda. So, what would you imagine floats back up to the surface?”

“All of the files from the KGB defector,” replied Jillian.

“Exactly. This is in part where it starts really coming together. The ex-KGB person, we’ll call him Yuri, hasn’t given up his passion for bin Laden just because he’s the newest citizen of merry old England. On the contrary, he really sees a growing threat in al-Qaeda and predicted long before anyone else that bin Laden was going to go global in a very big, very bad way.

“Yuri took classes at Oxford about all things Islamic and wrote lengthy letters to his case officer at MI6 about why England needed to take the bin Laden threat seriously. Of course, at that time, nobody saw any need to listen to Yuri, and so his letters were buried along with the rest of his intel. Then Yuri made a big mistake.”